GQ: I Mourn for Porn

[voluptuary_manque]

Um...I'm not talking about art, and if you're taking about art then we're not talking about much video porn out there. No. We don't have to be taught how to see. A man can look at a woman and get an erection just by seeing her. He doesn't have to be taught how to do that, does he? In fact, he can be taught "Don't get aroused by looking at a woman--" and he STILL will get aroused by looking at a woman.

And if he sees a female on a viewing screen, he'll get the same erection. No one has to teach this to him. It just happens and it has happened from the time we were ape like creatures in the forest, unable to communicate except by looking at each other and reacting to each other. If animals know by sight (as some do) which is a male or female and react accordingly without being taught, why do you imagine that humans have to be taught?

Even if you're argument has some merit, teaching kids to recognize things visually is not on par with teaching them the alphabet, then words, how to associate words with real things, then how to read sentences to envision something--which allows readers to translate what's on the page into an imaginary woman who then gives them (male readers) an erection.

Sorry, but it's not even close.[/QUOTE

I don't agree. I think porn is an acquired taste, just like beer and a lot of other male amusements.

I remember when I was maybe twelve or thirteen, I had this good friend who had a wonderful collection of science fiction books -- a lot of AE Van Vogt who was hard to find in those days -- and I used to go down to his house to read. Anyway, he found his father's porn stash -- well, in these days it probably would be cover art for a woman's magazine. They were tiny little pipes you could look into and see pictures of naked women -- women with extremely large breasts. I remember thinking that they looked deformed, that I had no interest at all in them, and I went back to something more interesting.

As for getting an erection just by looking at a woman -- once a male has been sexualized, yes. But that again is a learned process, an acquired taste.

I disagree. I went through the same SF stage (never got out of it, to be honest) but when a friend of ours smuggled the first Playboy of our experience onto campus in the seventh grade my reaction was immediate. No 'training' needed, I assure you.

 

[WRJames]

I disagree. I went through the same SF stage (never got out of it, to be honest) but when a friend of ours smuggled the first Playboy of our experience onto campus in the seventh grade my reaction was immediate. No 'training' needed, I assure you.

What state of sexual awareness were you in at that point?

 

[xssve]

I pretty much date my awareness period, with sexual awareness - that's what woke me up.

 

[Verdad]

I would think that the economic future for porn video could not be too bright. There is so much available for free -- and an unlimited supply from amateurs. For all we know we may soon be watching Tiger Woods and John Edwards -- no -- actually, I would pay not to have to see that that last one.

I don't think porn vids are in for a decline. That is, they well might be, who knows what the future brings, but I don't see it happening for the reason you cite. If free stuff threatened the industry, the industry would have collapsed by now. In fact, it's a point of some puzzlement to me that it doesn't. As someone who doesn't consume the stuff, I have the impression that if I wanted it, I could find enough of it for free to last me three lifetimes. Clearly that is not so, though, because the industry keeps creating huge revenues. Someone's paying—a lot of someone's. I guess if you look for it daily, the seemingly inexorable amounts of free porn come to an end sooner than I'd think, and then it's time to open your wallet. Interesting, in any case.

I don't agree. I think porn is an acquired taste, just like beer and a lot of other male amusements.

I think you actually have a point here. Not in the sense of anyone having to be taught to react to porn, because that's patently ridiculous. It's nevertheless an acquired taste, which is maybe best seen in this: nowadays, masturbation is almost synonymous with porn. People have quite assuredly masturbated throughout history, and it's never required anything more than desire, imagination, and a hand. Anything else was an occasional bonus. But to suggest that it's still as possible and as satisfying as ever has become tantamount to saying that people could bake their own bread or go somewhere on foot—unimaginably tedious, unnecessary, and quaint.

Unlike with cars and sliced bread, I'm not sure if it's an improvement in the standard of living. It most certainly is a change, though. The supply has ramped up the demand; the availability has modified the need.

 

[WRJames]

I think you actually have a point here. Not in the sense of anyone having to be taught to react to porn, because that's patently ridiculous..

Really? And what makes you say that? I think that you need some understanding of sex, perhaps some experience, for images of sexual activity to have any resonance.

As for depictions being arousing -- that is very culturally dependent. An image considered arousing in one culture may be mere bizarre or disgusting to another.

 

[xssve]

Really? And what makes you say that? I think that you need some understanding of sex, perhaps some experience, for images of sexual activity to have any resonance.

I disagree: all animals essentially respond to visual, aural, and olfactory stimulus to select mates, it's how sex works - any "understanding" come in strictly through hindsight, which is what makes for instance, the Christian notion of micromanaging sexual behavior deeply spurious, it really does just happen or we wouldn't be here - dogs don't need a "Philosophy" or an "understanding" reproduce or have sex, they just hump things until they find eventually find the right hole.

As for depictions being arousing -- that is very culturally dependent. An image considered arousing in one culture may be mere bizarre or disgusting to another.

All you're talking about is conditioning, a product of that cultural micromanagement of what is and is not considered "natural" - which is itself, in the broader sense, "unnatural".

All of which is to say, I think you'll find that a given individual will respond to images of sexual activity, regardless of experience - all that will differ is the value they assign to it, i.e., it may not necessarily be a sexual response, at least until they hit puberty - but that's only "experience" in the hormonal sense, i.e., experiential in the existentialist sense.

For some people, to see two people engaged in a sexual act in public is the end of the world, it triggers all of their subconscious moral horror and conditioned modesty - someone else may assign no more value to it than they would to a pair of canines going at it, a momentary distraction.

But they will probably make a note of it, either way.

I'm sorry about the dog analogy, but in fact, you can learn a lot from watching children and how they react to certain stimuli, since many of their responses are "pure", i.e., unconditioned - they will invariably find it cause for comment when two dogs get stuck together after around age Five, those comments in turn will generate feedback from others which is itself the process of cultural conditioning in praxis, and their value assignments will begin to shift and adapt accordingly.

 

[3113]

What state of sexual awareness were you in at that point?

Look, let's not complicate this. I'm not saying that all visual porn will stimulate everyone instantly. We do learn what turns us on--so those big breasted women on the SF cover didn't do it for you. But something did. And did it visually. There are women you see in a movie or on a billboard and the heart starts pounding, right? Now. Did your parents sit you down and say, "Look at this. These are women and these are their breasts. These women are small breasted, these are medium sized, these are large. The large ones are grotesque and you shouldn't get excited by those. Only get excited by the ones that are middle sized or smaller."

I'm guessing they didn't teach you that. So, however you got your preference, it wasn't taught to you the same way that reading was taught to you--letter by letter, then word by word. Right?

When a nine year old girl starts sighing over a boy band, collecting their albums, putting pictures on the wall, she's doing something her parents never taught her to do. Responding visually to what she sees and the stimulus that sight (of a "boy" of the opposite sex) is giving her. Now, whether she picks the "cute" one of the band or the quiet one or the bad boy or the drummer, that preference might have been taught her through experience or social conditioning. But no one taught her to have those feelings when getting an eyeful of a cute boy--even one she's never seen in person, only in photographs. It just happens.

Almost all human beings will gravitate on sight toward another human being they find sexually alluring, even if what they're seeing and can't keep their eyes off of is only a photograph. They don't need to be taught this. But in order for a human being to gravitate toward a book, they have to be taught to read. If they don't know how to read, why would they gravitate toward a book with no cover art and filled only with print? Yes?

 

[IrezumiKiss]

You must understand that as a reader you always have been in the minority and always will be. Reading is a hard thing for the human brain to do. Really! We have to be taught how to read and it's not an easy thing to learn or teach (we don't have to be taught how to see! Which is why film is so much more popular). And if a person is not taught how to read before a certain age, reading will never be all that easy or natural.

Even those who are taught how to read at the right age sometimes have trouble with it. Or just don't like it. Avid readers are a very small percentage of the population--by avid I mean people who love reading. If you read the back of shampoo bottles in the shower or cereal boxes at the breakfast table just to have something to read, then you're in that very small percentage. Reading, itself, gives you pleasure.

So: (1) Reading has to be taught. And unfortunately, schools aren't getting the support and such that they need. Meaning that illiteracy levels are up. You can't complain that porn on the page is vanishing if people can't read it. In that instance, it has nothing to do with a choice. (2) Even if you teach people reading, most won't be avid readers. So you will lose out there. In days of yore when porn films were scarce and even naughty pictures hard to come by, the written word was all there was. So even people who didn't like to read had to take what they could get and that was porn on the page. Now, those who don't like to read don't have to.

So, in one sense, porn on the page isn't vanishing so much leveling out to realistic levels. Most people don't enjoy reading, and so will go for film. But there is something we can do to make sure new generations discover and enjoy written porn. We can make sure literacy levels go up! We can't turn a blind eye to illiteracy then bemoan the fact that more people are watching porn on the internet than reading it on sites like this one. New generations can't enjoy what they don't know how to enjoy.

Not meaning to segue off porn and erotica, but your stressing of literacy just reminded me of two movies I recently watched and enjoyed — The Book Of Eli and Precious — which both focused on literacy as something that can save a world, in the literal, abstract and personal. I'd certainly agree that literacy is the binding string of fate wrapped around written, creative erotica and (more) literary pornography.

I'm wishing I'd kept my old issues of Yellow Silk magazine now. I don't know why I thought that would be around forever.

 

[al_Ussa]

Erotica and sexuality are so deeply ingrained in human culture that it will never fully go away no matter how much some might try to stamp it out. I'll be really honest... sometimes I'm in the mood for a well-written piece of smut (from here or elsewhere) because it allows me to use my imagination and gives me scenarios and visuals that might not otherwise exist. Well except maybe in hentai...

Which brings me to the flip side of that argument. Sometimes I DO want visuals. Thats what porn movies are for... and just plain erotica. Maybe I'll even fap to hentai or a pic of a model or celebrity.

And then of course there are the nights when I'm REALLY lucky and get to have actual sex with one of my girlfriends. Even then I might use some written erotica or film to get us in the mood. Or maybe not.

So it just depends what I've got on my plate at the moment

 

[Lisa Summers]

A draft letter below. Chime in if you want, gang. Not much else for me to do right now. We're getting snowed to death in the northeastern U.S. at the moment.

-PF

*~*~*~*


Dear Mr. Maddox,

I read your article in this month’s GQ and barely resisted yelling out an “Amen Brother!” in the middle of the waiting room of my local barbershop. I am in my mid-thirties and I too am afraid ours is the last generation of men that was weaned on written erotica. As your article shrewdly observed, the instant gratification of streaming online video is claiming the minds and, ahem, hearts of the younger folks.

I write to let you know, if you don’t already, that there are what I would call pockets of resistance to this ongoing brain drain to be found on the internet. Among them is www.literotica.com, a roughly twenty-year old website that permits the free posting and free reading of written erotic stories, i.e., literary erotica.

The beauty of Literotica is that it provides not just a ready repository of erotic stories, but also a forum for would-be authors to try their hand at writing erotic prose or poetry and to receive feedback from readers and fellow authors.

I invite you to have a peek at the site and, if you’re feeling brave, to pick a pseudonym, write out a fantasy or two and post them, Mr. Maddox. There’s at least one place left for us.

Yours truly,

PacoFear
Aspiring Young Literotican-at-large

I like your letter, Pacofear, I'm sure we'll have thousands of suggested 'improvements' for you.

 

[Lisa Summers]

Those guys never got me off.

Fanny Hill, The Pearl...though they had the drawbacks of being predominantly hetero.

 

[WRJames]

Look, let's not complicate this. I'm not saying that all visual porn will stimulate everyone instantly. We do learn what turns us on--so those big breasted women on the SF cover didn't do it for you. But something did. And did it visually. There are women you see in a movie or on a billboard and the heart starts pounding, right? Now. Did your parents sit you down and say, "Look at this. These are women and these are their breasts. These women are small breasted, these are medium sized, these are large. The large ones are grotesque and you shouldn't get excited by those. Only get excited by the ones that are middle sized or smaller."

I'm guessing they didn't teach you that. So, however you got your preference, it wasn't taught to you the same way that reading was taught to you--letter by letter, then word by word. Right?

When a nine year old girl starts sighing over a boy band, collecting their albums, putting pictures on the wall, she's doing something her parents never taught her to do. Responding visually to what she sees and the stimulus that sight (of a "boy" of the opposite sex) is giving her. Now, whether she picks the "cute" one of the band or the quiet one or the bad boy or the drummer, that preference might have been taught her through experience or social conditioning. But no one taught her to have those feelings when getting an eyeful of a cute boy--even one she's never seen in person, only in photographs. It just happens.

Almost all human beings will gravitate on sight toward another human being they find sexually alluring, even if what they're seeing and can't keep their eyes off of is only a photograph. They don't need to be taught this. But in order for a human being to gravitate toward a book, they have to be taught to read. If they don't know how to read, why would they gravitate toward a book with no cover art and filled only with print? Yes?

Well, visual porn probably does have a broader and more immediate appeal. However, I am not in agreement with your other points.

I cannot claim much insight into the mindset of nine year ol girls. My daughter was once that age, and she never posted pictures of boy bands on her walls. My own experience, as a male reaching puberty in the late fifties, was that boys started to date girls to impress other boys, and the girls were rated almost by a point system as to physical attractiveness. It wasn't so much that large breasts were attractive or arousing in and of themselves, as that they scored high on the status scale. Factors like personality or intellect were hardly of any importance. Similarly, girls rated boys based a similar point system. As for sexual activity -- again that was more a matter of being able to report (or invent) exploits for male friends, than actual lust.

Now my adolescent experience may have been unusual -- but I think it was fairly typical for the time and place. There wasn't a whole lot of true romance going on, mostly a lot of postuirng for social status. But I wonder how much of our sexual response is "natural." Probably very little. There are many ways to derive raw sexual gratification -- what if we were steered some other direction in our formative years? Look at ancient Sparta, for example, where young men were isolated from women and taught to find sexual gratification with each other. The same, I understand, can be said of English boarding schools. Would these boys react to pornography in the same "natural" way? Most likely not.

 

[Verdad]

Well, visual porn probably does have a broader and more immediate appeal. However, I am not in agreement with your other points.

I cannot claim much insight into the mindset of nine year ol girls. My daughter was once that age, and she never posted pictures of boy bands on her walls. My own experience, as a male reaching puberty in the late fifties, was that boys started to date girls to impress other boys, and the girls were rated almost by a point system as to physical attractiveness. It wasn't so much that large breasts were attractive or arousing in and of themselves, as that they scored high on the status scale. Factors like personality or intellect were hardly of any importance. Similarly, girls rated boys based a similar point system. As for sexual activity -- again that was more a matter of being able to report (or invent) exploits for male friends, than actual lust.

Now my adolescent experience may have been unusual -- but I think it was fairly typical for the time and place. There wasn't a whole lot of true romance going on, mostly a lot of postuirng for social status. But I wonder how much of our sexual response is "natural." Probably very little. There are many ways to derive raw sexual gratification -- what if we were steered some other direction in our formative years? Look at ancient Sparta, for example, where young men were isolated from women and taught to find sexual gratification with each other. The same, I understand, can be said of English boarding schools. Would these boys react to pornography in the same "natural" way? Most likely not.

Learning modifies the instinctual, but that doesn't mean there's no instinctual. A nice, fat worm makes me cringe, yet it makes another person salivate in anticipation, for in their culture worms are considered a delicacy. Clearly, there is some leeway as to what constitutes desirable food, but is it any less true that human beings salivate when presented with what they recognize as such? A degree of plasticity in what we can learn to accept as food doesn't make the response itself learned.

So too with sexually explicit materials and hardons. A human being of a certain age experiences arousal when observing sex acts or depictions thereof. If there's an age when he doesn't, it's not because he has yet to learn. It's because he has yet to mature. Developmental processes will take him from "naked adults are gross" to "sproing!" quite regardless of the specifics of his individual and cultural experience. Those specifics, together with his genetic makeup, will lead to variations in that to which he will strongly respond, but once again, the variety of expression doesn't obliterate the universality of the instinctual base.

If you want to say that experience of consuming porn enters the loop and becomes a part of the overall experience, thus exerting its influence on our preferences, I certainly won't argue. But the whole thing would never get off the ground if we weren't wired to respond in the first place.

 

[xssve]

I was attracted to girls and women very early, in a strong, but generally vague way - in the end, I sort of used porn in literary way, i.e., to satisfy my curiosity, wasn't always easy finding girls who wanted to play doctor.

In some respects that's still how I approach it: for me visual porn is symbology, I still have to use my imagination - I don't get all that attached to symbols, I much prefer that which they represent in this instance.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

Visual porn, per se, has never been what arouses me. From a very early age, I understood that I was aroused by women. However, I have never been turned on by female body parts laid bare and placed in a context that doesn't include emotion.

I can see a beautiful woman, or a not beautiful woman, and be aroused by her. It has nothing to do with her size or shape though. It has to do with something far subtler. It is something instinctual that pulls me, and it is that which makes me want women. It is animal more than anything else. The human element comes when the emotions are clicked on.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I agree with 3131, porn stories are mostly about fantasy fulfillment, and that's okay. That's no different from fantasies of becoming rich, or beautiful, or famous and the stories that cater to them. Not all of them are great lit, but so what; they're good, satisfying stories.

The difference with a typical porn story is this, though: the stories I just mentioned are about becoming. They begin with a poor guy (or an ugly duckling, etc) and follow his path to fame and fortune. The path is the story; the fame and fortune are merely the conclusion.

If porn were about money, though, it wouldn't do that. The guy would simply find a winning lottery ticket, and the story would describe, in lush detail, everything he ran off to buy with his millions. It wouldn't be so much a story as a description of "the shopping spree of my dreams."

That explains rather neatly why porn stories tend to hit narrow audience (one person's shopping list is not the same as the other's) and what they tend to lack as stories.

The ones that appeal to me not only have conflict but maintain conflict through sex, and it's not because I want to foist high literary pretensions on them; it's because conflict involves me as a reader. Once the conflict is resolved, it's as boring to read the description of sex as it would be to read how happily they lived after the happily-ever-after.

As for difference between media, I too don't fear for stories. Even the blandest, shopping spree kind, engages in a different and, to many, preferable way than a video of people fucking.

If I may niggle...

My working definition of pornography is that its sole intent and purpose is to sexually arouse and titillate. Any other value it might convey is incidental and ancillary.

Because of this, the hallmark of porn is its highly descriptive nature. The most basic and elementary type of porn is thus no more than a graphic description of people having sex, and the majority of stories here at Lit probably fall under this heading.

Porn is rather unique in this (though it does share similarities with other highly descriptive forms of literature, like fashion and travel writing, and some food journalism (see below)). Porn doesn't need story or character. It doesn't need any drama besides what's already intrinsic to the sexual act, and, unlike most fiction, there doesn't have to be any change in the characters.

Wish fulfillment, on the other hand, has no inherent erotic value. Wishing I had a ten inch penis doesn't get me off. Thinking about using it does. Porn is always about sex.

As we rise up from this most basic type of descriptive porn, stories at the next level of sophistication incorporate extra-sexual elements to contextualize the sex and give it more subtle erotic meaning. and here's where we start getting into what we think of as "story" - the social and situational context in which the sex occurs. This is where we usually find drama or conflict in the fictional sense: Will she fuck her father/teacher/acupuncturist? And/or will she fuck him at work/church/between El cars?

For a lot of people, the actual erotic heat in a story is contained in these contextual details. (In my observation, woman are especially responsive to social context. Men are more content with just watching the organs at work.) But though this social and situational context may itself be erotic (i.e., the thought of fucking your teacher), it's never pornographic, because it's not itself sexual.

So there is a difference between a porn story about fucking person X and a fantasy of becoming wealthy, and the difference is this: In the story about becoming wealthy, the emotional payoff doesn't lie in reading a detailed description of the protagonist's winning the lottery or whatever. In a porn story, the emotional payoff is exactly in the details of the sexual act.

Often we're told that a porn story is no more affecting or influential than a murder mystery, since they're both essentially fantasy. But this is a false analogy. The porn story is more than idle fantasy. It's a graphic depiction of the realization of that fantasy: a description of the deed. For the analogy to hold, a murder story would have to be a detailed depiction of the act of murder, reveling in the sensual details of taking another's life.

These days we talk about other kinds of porn - food porn, lifestyle porn, fashion porn - and I think we get it right. Food porn is not about fantasies of what you'd like to eat. It's close-up, detailed photographs and descriptions of comestibles, enhanced, detailed, and sexualized. It's only because there's such a paucity of vocabulary for the sensuality of eating that there isn't a more exact analogy to sexual porn in the gourmet world.

 

[xssve]

You must not watch the food network.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

You must not watch the food network.

Not sure who you were speaking to, baby, but I have to say in response (mostly because it's the first thing that popped into my head), that I do indeed watch that network for one reason in particular:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PHZqh4-kE.../Nigella_051228031830247_wideweb__300x293.jpg

Nigella can come over and make me dinner anytime at all. Mmm. Mmmmmm. Mmmmmmmm.

 

[xssve]

Nigella is hot, but married - I'm actually more partial to the Travel Channel, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations is a particular fave, very sensual, while Bizzare Foods is the gastronomic equivalent of fetish, and Man vs. Food is extreme porn.

In fact, I like extreme porn and I can't even watch that shit.

 

[Verdad]

If I may niggle...

My working definition of pornography is that its sole intent and purpose is to sexually arouse and titillate. Any other value it might convey is incidental and ancillary.

Because of this, the hallmark of porn is its highly descriptive nature. The most basic and elementary type of porn is thus no more than a graphic description of people having sex, and the majority of stories here at Lit probably fall under this heading.

Porn is rather unique in this (though it does share similarities with other highly descriptive forms of literature, like fashion and travel writing, and some food journalism (see below)). Porn doesn't need story or character. It doesn't need any drama besides what's already intrinsic to the sexual act, and, unlike most fiction, there doesn't have to be any change in the characters.

Wish fulfillment, on the other hand, has no inherent erotic value. Wishing I had a ten inch penis doesn't get me off. Thinking about using it does. Porn is always about sex.

As we rise up from this most basic type of descriptive porn, stories at the next level of sophistication incorporate extra-sexual elements to contextualize the sex and give it more subtle erotic meaning. and here's where we start getting into what we think of as "story" - the social and situational context in which the sex occurs. This is where we usually find drama or conflict in the fictional sense: Will she fuck her father/teacher/acupuncturist? And/or will she fuck him at work/church/between El cars?

For a lot of people, the actual erotic heat in a story is contained in these contextual details. (In my observation, woman are especially responsive to social context. Men are more content with just watching the organs at work.) But though this social and situational context may itself be erotic (i.e., the thought of fucking your teacher), it's never pornographic, because it's not itself sexual.

So there is a difference between a porn story about fucking person X and a fantasy of becoming wealthy, and the difference is this: In the story about becoming wealthy, the emotional payoff doesn't lie in reading a detailed description of the protagonist's winning the lottery or whatever. In a porn story, the emotional payoff is exactly in the details of the sexual act.

Often we're told that a porn story is no more affecting or influential than a murder mystery, since they're both essentially fantasy. But this is a false analogy. The porn story is more than idle fantasy. It's a graphic depiction of the realization of that fantasy: a description of the deed. For the analogy to hold, a murder story would have to be a detailed depiction of the act of murder, reveling in the sensual details of taking another's life.

These days we talk about other kinds of porn - food porn, lifestyle porn, fashion porn - and I think we get it right. Food porn is not about fantasies of what you'd like to eat. It's close-up, detailed photographs and descriptions of comestibles, enhanced, detailed, and sexualized. It's only because there's such a paucity of vocabulary for the sensuality of eating that there isn't a more exact analogy to sexual porn in the gourmet world.

Niggle all you like! And of course I agree with you. I've tried out a million analogies for porn in babbling about it, but they can only highlight some particular feature. None of them is a perfect match because porn is in the end porn—sui generi, as it were—just like sex is sex and not something else. The effect of viewing porn is a visceral response we find rewarding in itself. The comparison with food nails the visceral feature the best, but it too eventually breaks down. We don't find staring at food we cannot eat nearly as compelling. Being in a state of hunger isn't rewarding per se, but being in a state of lust is, and then there's all the complex emotional stuff around sexuality that isn't there with food.

What I wanted to show with that analogy was just something you know and employ to a great effect in your stories. A graphic description will have some effect, as per above, even if it lacks a proper context. So long as it can transmit the images of what's happening to the reader, the basic condition is satisfied. The effect will be incomparably stronger if we're engaged on more levels, though—if we feel for the characters, if we're made to fret as to what happens next and if they (and us) will get what we want. All the usual tension&conflict stuff applies, even if it's possible to coax out some reaction without them.

I think maybe it sounds like I'm talking about something outside of the sex scene, though, and I'm not. It's not two hundred pages of agonizing before a first nipple is flashed that I mean. I mean, something needs to be at stake during sex and dramatized through sex. Will she give in; will he; what does it mean to them to be doing what they're doing; what will be the consequences—things like that. An entirely conflictless story, where they go through some inconsequential motions, just doesn't hold my attention. Some basics of our engagement with fiction hold after all, I think, and then, real sex itself is hotter for the emotional buildup and meaning with which we infuse it. Or am I being girly about it?

 

[3113]

But I wonder how much of our sexual response is "natural." Probably very little. There are many ways to derive raw sexual gratification -- what if we were steered some other direction in our formative years? Look at ancient Sparta, for example, where young men were isolated from women and taught to find sexual gratification with each other. The same, I understand, can be said of English boarding schools. Would these boys react to pornography in the same "natural" way? Most likely not.

A person can be made to do something and even be comfortable with it without being inclined toward it or it being their favorite thing. Gay men can have sex with women. It doesn't make them any less gay.

There have been gay men and women raised their whole formative years seeing only heterosexual relationships, hearing only about heterosexual relationships, expecting to have only heterosexual relationships and not knowing what homosexuality was or if knowing about it, knowing that they'd be beaten or killed for engaging in it, that it was taboo, sinful, wrong. And these gay people with this history will tell you, flat out, that they knew they were gay from childhood, and that no matter what they did, they never stopped being gay. They never stopped being lured, stimulated, attracted to their own sex.

But you're missing the point. We are visually stimulated. Movement stimulates us, because any thing moving sends sparks to the brain. What we recognize or don't recognize stimulates us. We don't have to be taught to see. And, as evidence by gays who are gay even when everything they're taught tells them not to be, there are parts of what we see that stimulate us sexually that we aren't taught, either.

It's not the same as reading. That is my point. Argue all you like, and you come right back to that. You are either born with sight or you're not. And if you are, then what you see stimulates you--movement, color, patterns--even if you're not taught a damn thing about what you're seeing. Now you tell me. Are you born knowing how to read? Will words on the page stimulate your brain if you never learned how to read? Because I guarantee you, a newborn baby is stimulated by what it sees even before it has enough brain power to know what it's seeing and how it ought to be stimulated by it.

 

[WRJames]

A person can be made to do something and even be comfortable with it without being inclined toward it or it being their favorite thing. Gay men can have sex with women. It doesn't make them any less gay.

There have been gay men and women raised their whole formative years seeing only heterosexual relationships, hearing only about heterosexual relationships, expecting to have only heterosexual relationships and not knowing what homosexuality was or if knowing about it, knowing that they'd be beaten or killed for engaging in it, that it was taboo, sinful, wrong. And these gay people with this history will tell you, flat out, that they knew they were gay from childhood, and that no matter what they did, they never stopped being gay. They never stopped being lured, stimulated, attracted to their own sex.

But you're missing the point. We are visually stimulated. Movement stimulates us, because any thing moving sends sparks to the brain. What we recognize or don't recognize stimulates us. We don't have to be taught to see. And, as evidence by gays who are gay even when everything they're taught tells them not to be, there are parts of what we see that stimulate us sexually that we aren't taught, either.

It's not the same as reading. That is my point. Argue all you like, and you come right back to that. You are either born with sight or you're not. And if you are, then what you see stimulates you--movement, color, patterns--even if you're not taught a damn thing about what you're seeing. Now you tell me. Are you born knowing how to read? Will words on the page stimulate your brain if you never learned how to read? Because I guarantee you, a newborn baby is stimulated by what it sees even before it has enough brain power to know what it's seeing and how it ought to be stimulated by it.

I think you are too hung up on the reading part. After all, we could convert our stuff into audio books. That's actually a big market. I have a friend whose only experience with literature these days is listening to audio books on the way to work.

So if what we are comparing is language as opposed to vision -- then were are in a very different contest.